Nuggets of Film Critic Wisdom
Submitted by lukeprog on Mon, 10/04/2004 - 11:49
Tags:
- "A filmmaker who prefers ideas to images... is fighting the nature of his art. The printed word is ideal for ideas; film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes." - Roger Ebert, reviewing 8 1/2.
- "The alien race exists more effectively in negative space: We react to its invisible presence more strongly than we possibly could to any actual representation." - Roger Ebert, reviewing 2001: A Space Odyssey. True of more than 2001's alien race, naturally.
- "We all have movies... that transcend ordinary categories of good and bad, and penetrate straight to our hearts... These are movies that represent what I yearned for at one time in my life, and to see them again is like listening to a song that was popular the first summer you were in love."
Author Comments:
Feel free to recommend quotes! I'll continue to look.
While you could also easily make a list of nuggests of idiocy that was largely populated by Roger Ebert, I agree that he occasionally has some really perceptive gems in his reviews. Here's one of my favorites from his Great Movies review of Saturday Night Fever (feel free to edit your favorite sentence if you wish to include it):
"Saturday Night Fever was Gene Siskel's favorite movie, and he watched it at least 17 times. We all have movies like that, titles that transcend ordinary categories of good and bad, and penetrate straight to our hearts. My own short list would include La Dolce Vita, A Hard Day's Night, and The Third Man. These are movies that represent what I yearned for at one time in my life, and to see them again is like listening to a song that was popular the first summer you were in love."
Right, well, a list of nuggets of idiocy would be way too long...
Thanks for the nugget.